


(Just Like) Starting Over

by screamlet



Category: Actor RPF, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Banter, Ensemble Cast, First Date, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard's book was kind of like the Bible in that way where one line from it could be taken wildly out of context and blown out of proportion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Just Like) Starting Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lasha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasha/gifts).



> Set during the filming of the sequel, around September/October 2011. Zach left for NY in March 2010, hence 'the year you were away'. Title comes from the John Lennon song of the same name.

Leonard's book was kind of like the Bible in that way where one line from it could be taken wildly out of context and blown out of proportion. In this case, the line was:

_This happened around the time when Bill and I were sleeping together again._

The central cast of _Star Trek XII: Seriously the Script is So Under Wraps Even We Don't Know the Whole Story_ had reached that line in the same 90-second span during one of their Festival of Reunification group activities -- in this case, The Reading of The Book, which promised to be more salacious than Simon's and a bit shorter, too.

Anton asked, "Whoa, what?"

Simon cackled.

Chris snorted so hard he had to run for a tissue.

Zoe shrieked, "What the _FUCK_?"

Karl said, "Shut up, all -- OH MY GOD THEY _SLEPT TOGETHER_?"

John added, " _Again_ ," and continued reading with a smirk.

Zach, finally, got to the line and said, "Could we bring attention to the imperfect tense? As in, they were continually sleeping together for multiple periods of time."

"Why are you pointing this out?" Zoe wailed. "Why are you making me think of them together? Some of us would like to have sex with their boyfriends without thinking of Bill and Leonard every time for the rest of their _lives_ , Zach!"

"That's ageist, you know," Simon said.

"Did I say it was because they're _old as balls_ , Simon? No!"

"Zoe objects on purely objective, aesthetic grounds," Chris said as he sat next to Zach again. "But way to go, Leonard. This is already _way_ better than _I Am Spock_."

"Seriously," Zach said, still engrossed in the book.

"You're doing it wrong," Chris said to Zach as he picked up his copy of the book again. "Now we know there's good stuff in here -- to the index!"

"Yeah, let us know how the search for Shatner, William -- fucking senselessly goes, will you?" Karl commented.

"Found it," Anton said. "Shatner, William -- romantic relationship. 92-106, 109, 115, 120-24 -- fuck, it goes on _forever_."

"Zach, did you _know_ about this?" Simon asked suddenly. "You and Leonard were always Spocking around on set -- did this just fail to come up in conversation with _him_ , or fail to come up in conversation with _us_?"

Zach folded his arms and looked down at the page on his iPad, considering it carefully. "I feel like if he had ever said, 'when Bill and I were fucking', I would have noticed and shrieked and run and told all of you? But he also --"

"Do go on," John said, clutching his own iPad to his chest like a teenage girl and her binder covered in hearts.

"Just, stuff he said," Zach finished. "Now, in retrospect, there were like, big pink flags saying _ask me about my secret years-long gay relationship with my best friend_."

"And you obviously couldn't _ask_ ," Simon began, and Zach could see that he had some additional quip or whatever to tease Zach with, but -- it never quite made it out of his mouth, though Simon did manage to glance at Chris and then back down at his iPad (seriously, _they all had iPads_ except Chris, it was ridiculous. And Karl had a Nook to go with his fucking preposterous tea gourd.)

"Well," Chris said. "Has anyone -- I mean, what do we do now?"

"What do you mean?" Zach asked.

"I mean, the book comes out around when we start the press tour. Review copies will go out soonish -- we're all going to be interviewing all the time for the next year or so -- what do we say?"

*

"Why are you asking me?" J.J. asked on a set visit a few days later. "You know this whole co-director thing I've got with Bryan and Damon -- it means I'm going to stay the hell away so you all don't give me another soda-induced ulcer, right? That's a thing, guys. That's a thing they found in me. Because of you."

"Yeah, but come on, J.J.," Chris said, as he had been appointed the Cast Representative from the Committee on Leonard's Book and What the Fuck Seriously How Did We Not Realize He and Shatner Had a Thing Going Earlier. "You know you've got a better, _reasonable_ handle on how shit will play down once it's out there."

"It's nice of you to appeal to my ego, prodigious as it is," J.J. replied. Chris looked over his shoulder at Zach and mouthed _fuck yeah prodigious_ before turning back to J.J. quickly. "So I'm going to be a Karl-sized nerd about it and, should any of you be faced with a question about Leonard and Bill --"

"Making the beast with two backs," Zach said.

"Doin' the nastaaaaaay," John said.

" _Being involved_ ," J.J. sighed, "I'll ask you to remember Wheaton's Law."

"Wow, that is quite nerdy," Karl said.

"Like -- wait, who?" Chris asked.

"Don't be dicks," J.J. said to them. "You're all over the age of 30 _or_ you're Anton and therefore have a resume three times as long as everyone else. Don't be dicks."

J.J. then looked directly at Zach and Chris and said, "That means _don't be dicks_."

"What? Us? What? We're not dicks!" Zach said.

"Together, yeah, you're dicks," J.J. said. "In that way where if the two of you find something funny, so must everyone else, except it's _usually_ the case that no one does."

"And then," Simon laughed, "They throw some big words at the situation and we go for drinks to forget how they've hurt us. Ah, good times. I can't wait for the tour. Sorry, did I say can't?"

"We're so not the dicks here," Chris said.

"You're dildos," Anton said. "Both in the sense of you being giant dicks _and_ looking really ridiculous to outsiders."

"That is such a brilliant metaphor I can't even be mad," Zach said as he put an arm around Anton. "Well done, you. All that Internet schoolin' really got the job done."

"Can a dildo be condescending?" Karl asked.

"That's what makes Zach special," John replied.

"Officially, for the record, on this date at this time: I hate all of you," Zach declared to a chorus of tiny golf claps.

*

"We're not dicks," Chris said as he and Zach ate lunch in their shared trailer later that day.

"We're discerning," Zach said.

"Conscientious," Chris added.

"We know what we like, what we find funny, and that's it."

Chris nodded in agreement and they continued eating/annotating their scripts in a comfortable silence.

"And you know what," Chris said suddenly. "That one line in Leonard's book -- and, uh, the rest of the references to stuff -- doesn't mean it was serious between him and Bill. I mean, people can just fuck around a few times, doesn't mean -- whatever everyone else thinks it means. Doesn't mean it was like, some huge thing. I mean, they had _families_ the whole time, too, and wives and shit, and I don't see why we have to blow it so out of proportion. Like, they're good friends who, over the past _forty years_ , maybe happened to fuck once in a while. I don't think it's as big of a deal as we're making it out to be."

Chris stared at Zach, who blinked slowly because that was a whole lot of bullshit tumbling out of Chris's mouth. Chris, however, didn't look like he could handle Zach taking that moment to point out it was absolute crap.

They could also have been individually projecting the shit out of their own issues onto the Bill and Leonard thing, but that was getting _way_ too deep into everything.

"You agree with me, right?" Chris asked.

Zach didn't, even if Chris looked so desperate to hear that reassurance. Except _why_ would Chris want to -- oh, fuck everything, Leonard had ruined their lives. Zach would have been happy to live his life and pine quietly for one of his closest friends, a longing that was almost pleasant now with its constant presence in the back of his mind, and now that -- what did it look like, exactly? Clearly, he could probably get by with not addressing the issue for another forty years, so.

"It's -- we're a different generation, Chris," Zach said. "We don't _have_ to be all -- okay, and I know, I know, biggest hypocrite in the big hypocrite world, but we -- _people_ don't have to be closeted like this anymore -- like Leonard and whatever he and Bill had/have."

"I think Richard Chamberlain did it best," Chris said suddenly, his eyes lighting up and a smile slipping effortlessly onto his face, first at the corners of his eyes and then onto his mouth, teeth glinting brightly even in the relative dimness of the trailer. "He made his millions, then fucked off to Hawaii with his boyfriend for thirty years. _And_ he was still really hot -- did you see _The Thorn Birds_?"

Zach stared a little more at Chris and then shook his head, flailed a little because he just remembered that whole thing where Chris was _straight_ , mostly, and Chris had never talked about the whole... _gay thing_ as something he wanted. "Why is this even a thing for you -- you're only sort of bi -- occasionally, even -- a one on the Kinsey scale --"

"I don't know," Chris said. He looked down at his lunch and said, "A lot changed while you were in New York. That year you were gone. I don't know, I was on my own a lot, with a lot of new people, and it's -- the mostly straight thing is looking less sure, you know?"

"And all those interviews, wherein you _begged_ everyone and anyone to set you up with women?" Zach asked, forcing a smirk onto his face and feeling every inch a robot calculating his every movement, word, and breath.

"God, I don't know," Chris laughed. "You know how I get when I'm in interviews, and when there's no one there to jab me in the side and remind me I sound like a douche."

"You do get really douchey," Zach agreed. "Well."

Zach had to swallow because it was one of those moments where everything between them stilled and Zach could almost see the word _IMPASSE_ form in the air like in a comic book. Since he had come back from New York, they had dived back into going to the gym all the time and other pre-production bullshit, but hadn't quite had the time to Catch Up until recently -- until now?

And it was just so easy, sitting there with Chris and a sandwich and a script and the sense of nothing else existing in the world, to remember why he had fallen so hard and why he was beginning to fall again but even harder -- all of Zach’s attention was stolen by Chris rubbing the nape of his own neck and showing off the new, lean jaw, the lips he still licked at nervously, the occasional glances at Zach with wide, irresponsibly blue eyes that had Zach wanting to agree with just about anything Chris said.

Except Zach couldn't agree with this thing that had Chris spooked and thinking that shit hadn't changed since the last time they had shared a trailer and been joined at the hip making a movie. They had been _celebrities_ for what, six years now? More than that, and they weren't going anywhere. Maybe it was time to risk some of that capital they had accumulated, if Business!Zach wanted to rear his head. Times were changing. Maybe this was their moment.

Chris had grown up, too, in the past year or so, no longer the vicious bitch who spent an entire coffee date with Zach and John waving his middle finger at the photographers and making every photo unusable, or stalking through airports looking like both a sexual predator and the Unabomber. This Chris ignored photographers who followed him to work and let people upload photos of him to Twitter where each of his fillings could be counted because he was laughing so carelessly. This was a Chris Zach wouldn’t run from. This was a Chris who Zach could pull close at a farmer's market or red carpet, and it didn't matter what went on around them as long as Chris was there with him.

"Chris, we're ready for you," a voice called out from the other side of the trailer door. "Zach, you have another half-hour, if you could head to make up for a touch up."

"Sure, yeah," they called out together.

Chris left, sandwich and script abandoned on the couch next to Zach, and stopped at the door to shoot Zach the sweetest, most genuine smile he'd seen in a long fucking while before the door closed behind him. Zach looked at the sandwiches in his lap and to his side, as if they could tell him what the fuck any of _that_ was about.

*

Zoe set her wedding date near the end of filming, which was still a good long time away, but meant she used her free time on set to help her fiancé actually plan the damn thing and get it underway.

"I'm sorry I won't have eyebrows for your wedding," Zach sighed as she and a seamstress circled him in his groomsman's suit. "I mean, I'll have them, but they won't be up to their full lustre by then, you know?"

"Yes, that's my main concern -- whether you'll have eyebrows in time for my wedding. Are these the dressiest shoes you have in your trailer?" Zoe asked. "Warning you now: the pants are going to be a little on the long side, so you can probably swap in two-inch heels at the last minute and not look weird, but the six-inch Louboutins stay home. Manolos, _maybe_."

"Ha ha, that's cute, I'm gay so I like women's shoes, very. I don't even know, Zoe, just very."

"Baby, you're lucky I can remember your name right now -- actually, I _can't_ remember your name, that's why I called you 'baby'."

"You're showing hints of bridezilla, you know," Zach sighed.

The seamstress said something to Zoe in Spanish, to which Zoe fervently agreed. Zach tilted his head in hopes of understanding, because that was how foreign languages worked.

"Nancy said she couldn't even _look_ at a man in the six months before her wedding," Zoe said emphatically.

"Oh, because of like, some Hispanic tradition?" Zach asked in his _let me understand your foreign culture please_ voice.

"No, you jerk, because planning a wedding is total bullshit and she was going to kill all those hapless men who thought they could help by -- ugh, I can't even. Keith got a good deal on the reception hall, but he's holding auditions of his friends' bands and they all suck. Why can't he know any talented people? I'm telling you, Zach, just elope."

"Aw, you do remember my name," Zach cooed instead of pointing out she could just hire a wedding planner with all that _Avatar_ money.

"Speaking of this bullshit, are you seeing anyone?" Zoe asked. "John says his google alert on you only turns up daily yoga bullshit and not you like, leaving any hot guys' houses for a walk of shame before you turn up here."

"I'm not, but! Our princess did turn up some interesting dirt on himself recently."

"Oh?" Zoe asked as she fussed with the waistband of his pants and ignored him when he giggled because he was ticklish.

"He apparently did some soul searching while all of us fucked off to our respective movie-making lands and he thinks his preferences have migrated to The Cock Side."

"Oh Zach," Zoe said, suddenly engaged in the conversation. "You were still in New York, weren't you? When it happened?"

"When what?"

"When _everyone stopped giving a fuck_ about you and Chris. Including you, may I add? Did you forget all the drunk texts, and I mean _all_ the drunk texts you sent me? And how none of them included Chris?"

"Uh."

"Oh, or let me quote some voicemails -- Keith found a way for me to download them as mp3s, so I kept them forever." She cleared her throat and said, "YO Z. Zoe Zoe Zoe. Zoe so wasted. Oh my god _SO TRASHED_. Zoe I'm here with husband number two -- not starter husband -- he's so pretty, and he's -- oh my god, how old are you? Oh, that's old. Twenty-five, you should be dead already. Oh my God, just kidding. Zoe I miss youuuuuuu call me call me call me -- Zoe, this bitch was on _Broadway_ , that means he's -- shh I gotta go Zoe bye call me bye."

"Well, I never forgot who I was talking to," Zach said.

"It just makes me sad that you spend like, years living like a normal person, and then the minute we come back here and Chris is around for more than five minutes, you become a total crazy person again. It's never going to happen, Zach. Don't you think it would have already? Why would you want someone who's known you what, five years now? And it takes him _that long_ to realize he might like dick and he might like yours?"

"I never said I was interested," Zach said weakly.

"Take off your pants," Zoe said.

"How is that --"

"The measurements, Zach!"

"Right right sorry," he said as he hastily took off the dress pants.

"Nancy says she's afraid your legs are going to snap any minute," Zoe informed him.

"They haven't yet, but thank you for your concern," he replied.

"Get someone to feed you, _idiota_ ," Nancy said as she looked over the hem of the pants. "If that boy feeds you, then good."

"You speak English?" Zach asked.

"Maybe she prefers not to -- go on, get out," Zoe said.

"Does _idiota_ mean idiot?" he asked as he was thrown out of her trailer.

"Yes, but it's so much more satisfying in Spanish," she said. The door slammed behind her and Zach stood outside, thinking about things and sadly buttoning up his Starfleet pants.

*

He needed a point of view that was intimate but more objective than Zoe (and he can't blame her for being frustrated since the hours of whining he had subjected her to kind of merited her a Nobel Peace Prize -- having kept the peace between the side of her that brother-loved him and the side that wanted to beat sense into him with a table.)

"Wait, you what?" John asked.

"Chris thinks he's… more into guys now," Zach said slowly, "And our next projects after Trek are going to be local, so that's like, 18 months of actually being together, potentially. So I'm thinking --"

"Is this because of Leonard's book?" John asked.

"No no, it’s not, it’s -- uh."

"Oh my GOD," John said, digging his fingers into his hair. "Everyone in _Star Trek_ is gay. Everyone." Zach laughed but John stood up and yelled, "Don't you fucking giggle at that shit! You're part of it! You're part of _it_. I need to tell everyone. Everyone needs to know. It's like a virus. The gay is spreading. What am I going to tell my wife? _What if I'm a carrier_?"

Maybe Zach had grown up a little, too, in the past year or so, because his conversation with John was taking place on the bridge, Zach at Spock's station and John sitting on the edge of the console. At least, until he got up and began to walk around the bridge yelling at the extras and crew, " _Everyone in Star Trek is gay!_ Run now if you want to get married in the state of California! Run now if you want to keep your sweatpants! Just run, everyone!"

"Was that necessary?" Zach asked. John rushed up to the rail separating the levels of the bridge and rest against it, worn out by dramatics.

"Yeah, actually -- did you notice I have like, two lines in this scene? Meanwhile, longing looks to Anton and SCENE."

"What are you two up to?" Karl asked as he snuck up behind John and rested against the railing next to him.

"Z is thinking of wooing young Princess Pine again," John said.

"Tell more people, John. Tell everyone," Zach sighed.

"Oh, I will, because you're an idiot and forgot that my philosophy is: if you tell someone a secret? It wasn't worth keeping and everyone deserves to know."

"Now now, I think he did the right thing telling us," Karl said. "Because I, for one, didn't know Chris Pine was the only gay man in California. Did you?"

"Actually, I didn't either," John considered. "That's weird. I guess all those gay guys I've met here my entire life must have been lesbians. I can't tell the difference, can you?"

"You guys are awful," Zach said as he folded his arms and put his head down on the console.

"No, _you're_ awful for being such a twat," Karl said. "Look at how good you two are now! No moping, no uncomfortably wistful looks, and maybe one day we'll even get around to acting and you guys can remember how good you were at that, too."

"I'm going to stop talking to people about this," Zach decided.

"I'm pretty sure that's the best idea you've had today," John said. "I'll consult Simon and Anton, but I'm pretty sure they'll agree. I'll check with Twitter, too, see what they have to say about it."

"My life is shit," Zach moaned.

"First world problems," John sighed along with him. "Karl, let's go find some cake. Zach's made me despair of whether he'll ever be happy and fulfilled as a human being, so I want to eat my feelings."

"I like cake," Karl said, and he leaned over the railing further until he could whisper-hiss, "Zach? Do you like cake?"

"I'm doing a no-sugar cleanse for --"

"His life is forfeit," Karl said. "Come on, let's go eat _all_ the sugar."

*

It took another two days, but Zach finally had lunch with Chris in their trailer again and, somewhere in the middle of Zach's mushroom quesadilla and Chris's wrap-of-crap (his words, not Zach's), Zach cleared his throat and just fucking went for it.

"Hey," Zach began.

"Yeah?" Chris asked as he flipped through a book.

"Do you want to, like, go out on a date with me?"

 **Q:** Could he sound more like a thirteen-year-old boy?  
 **A:** No, clearly not. If the stage direction on the script of his life said SOUND AWKWARD AND NEEDY AND PATHETIC LIKE A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY ASKING THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN SCHOOL TO THE HOMECOMING DANCE, he couldn't have done it. Just couldn't. Because in it of itself, asking Chris Pine out on a first date five years after meeting in a friend's kitchen/gym, now when Chris was more confident and attractive and intelligent than ever -- how had Zach not planned for this better and gotten a binder to cover his terror-boner, or a make up artist to dab at the torrents of sweat collecting under his Spockbangs?

Chris closed his book and looked at him, and if Zach thought he was good at reading people before, that talent had just flown out the fucking window. In fact, he was sure he was pretty bad at just about everything except staring at Chris and trying not to let on that his breathing pattern was about to become more akin to a death rattle than like, inhaling and exhaling.

"Do _you_ want to go out on a date with me?" Chris asked.

Zach realized his own lips were completely fucking chapped, like he had been out walking in a goddamn blizzard for five avenue blocks instead of just sitting in a temperature-controlled trailer eating lunch with one of his best friends. What even. Maybe it was his body's way of saying it was a bad idea.

 _Body, you stop that right now_ , Zach thought to himself. _Brain, you too. We love him for his mind and spiritual side and what the fuck ever, but can you please consider how amazing his mouth on us would be?_

"I do, actually," Zach finally said.

"What about us?"

"Well, isn't that what dating is? A trial period before deciding to either move on to someone else or stay together for as long as we both can stand it?"

"Good point," Chris said, and he licked his lips quickly. "Is this because of Leonard?"

"That was one of my reasons for _not_ asking, actually," Zach admitted. "I -- being around you again, you're -- before, you were my hot best friend and just amazing to be around, but impossible to -- I couldn't see us together. Not really."

Zach watched Chris swallow hard and ask, "What do you mean?"

"You -- you couldn't handle yourself, and being famous, and I wasn't sure if you ever could. Like, we all thought that," Zach clarified. "We were all worried about you losing your shit one day and.. anyway, and that's kind of… I think, I _hope_ it's going to be a fact of both our lives, together or apart. That we're going to be in the spotlight because we're good at what we do. And if you couldn’t handle that..."

"That's -- you know, that's not the most romantic way of saying you like me," Chris laughed dryly.

"Telling you I like you? That's just redundant," Zach spat out awkwardly. "That was always a given, wasn’t it?” He cleared his throat and added, “So. Yeah."

"Yeah," Chris said. "Well."

 _BRAIN STOP TALKING COME ON YOU WILL SCARE HIM MORE THAN THE BOWLCUT_ , Zach pleaded inwardly.

Chris pulled up his knees and leaned against them, looking at Zach as if -- he looked amused, and he would have thought it was like Chris was seeing him for the first time, but no, it wasn't that. It was just a small smile again, a laugh with a tiny hint of teeth -- maybe it was relief. It looked like relief, and Zach couldn’t help mirror that back at him. "Yeah."

"Yeah?" Zach asked coyly.

"Yeah, let's go out. On a date. Like people do."

"Okay."

"Okay," Chris laughed. "Did you have any ideas or are they still to come?"

"Of course I have ideas, come on," Zach said, and he grabbed his iPad and threw himself on the floor at Chris's feet, arranging himself on his stomach and working intently on pulling up windows and tabs and notes. He looked over his shoulder at Chris, who laughed again and rubbed at his barely-there Kirk stubble before he joined him, lying on his stomach next to Zach, most of their sides pressed together as they watched Zach's screen.

*

"Dinner and a Noel Coward revival -- it's pretty gay, you know," Chris laughed as they waited for their drinks.

"It's _Easy Virtue_ \-- nothing gay about it. You're overhistoricizing so stop it."

"Did you see the movie a few years ago -- yeah, you did," Chris said, and he leaned against his hand as he remembered. "We saw it together. I remember. _You_ remembered."

"Yeah," Zach admitted. "I think shit is lining up in our favor. What are the chances that the play version of a movie we saw three years ago was being revived just as I asked you out?"

"I think you waited," Chris said. "I think you used that Lego Antikytheran Mechanism prototype from the Apple labs to figure out when to schedule our date."

"I also encouraged friends of mine to be in the production so I could get really good seats on really short notice," Zach laughed. "Would you just face the facts? That I'm an evil genius and -- wait, Antikytheran Mechanism? The one at that museum nearby? How are you that much of a nerd? How am _I_ that much of a nerd?"

"Uh," Chris said slowly. "I might have -- and this isn't confirmation or denial, it's just a possibility -- I might have -- gotten a tablet."

"What."

"I might have joined the 21st century. I might have… gotten something that runs Android."

" _What_?"

"It might -- again, not saying this is true or anything -- it might -- I might be using Google Reader to read the news. And blogs."

"Not -- Chris, but you were keeping print journalism alive. What -- Chris, what are you _saying_?"

"Zach," Chris said slowly, and he reached across the table just as their drinks arrived and clasped both of Zach's hands. "Zach. I -- I might have downloaded the Yelp app. And signed in with -- with --"

"With what, Chris?" Zach asked dramatically, clutching Chris's hands even tighter.

"Zach," Chris sobbed, "I might have signed in with my Gmail account. Oh God, what have I _done_? I've signed up for _Gmail_. Zach! They have a _Google Chat_ app!"

"We call it gchat, by the way."

"Well, there's some relief," Chris sighed. "I'm not totally in touch with everything yet."

"Let's toast," Zach said. "To Chris, joining the upper class of Western civilization with totally unnecessary technology that will allow me to annoy him way more often than I already do."

"And to Zach," Chris began, "Who held my hands in public, in front of a _waiter_ , and didn't walk out of here hyperventilating or suffering from an aneurysm."

"For fucking real, man," Zach said as they clinked their glasses. Feeling impulsive, Zach moved his chair so he was next to Chris rather than across from him, then leaned in and kissed him, closing his eyes when he saw Chris looking more amused than spontaneously orgasmic.

"You're not swooning enough. My life is worth nothing," Zach said when he pulled away.

"Yeah, sorry for the lack of swooning. I'm kind of slutting it up tonight -- no corset, you see."

"Wait, is that a metaphor? Holy shit, you're not wearing underwear, are you? _Are you_? This is a first date!" Zach hissed. "We're being all grown up and shit!"

"Maybe I just like the feeling," Chris said as he took Zach's hand and ran his thumb across the back. "It's not always about you."

Zach raised his eyebrows and Chris laughed, and their hands stayed linked on the table until their dinners arrived. Even then, Zach thought his hand had a weird time adjusting to not being linked with Chris's as they bitched and ate, but it would be all right. There was still all of the play, and maybe a walk around their neighborhood, and maybe other dates, too.

"Upside," Chris said a little into their meals. "Now that we got our first kiss out of the way, I don't feel like throwing up anymore!"

"That is _so great_ , Chris," Zach said gently. "Thanks for not vomiting on me."

Chris beamed and dug into his meal again, and Zach pretended not to notice the occasional sneaking glances, looking almost a little dazed that they were there.

Frankly, he couldn't believe it either.

*

Two months later, Bill and Leonard visited the set unexpectedly.

"Oh my God," Bill announced as he walked onto the bridge set, Leonard in tow. "This is. _Decadence._ "

"I think they're all plugged in. They said the Matrix was fake, right?" Leonard asked. "I'm very much starting to have my doubts."

The cast was sitting at the various bridge stations, each on their phones or iPad or _Karl and his Nook_ , and most of them looked up briefly to wave and smile, except Zach and Chris, who had managed to lodge themselves into the captain's chair and declared that they were never leaving before diving into their iPad and Android, respectively.

 **chriswpine:** rare pictures of hemingway getting his drink on yeaaaaah

 **zachquinto:** wow, old white guy drinking with other old white guys. cool. puppy video!

 **chriswpine:** that’s the same one i sent you earlier! you looked so Deep in Thought. thought you needed a puppy.

 **zachquinto:** his name is noah!

 **chriswpine:** did you get the email about that shelter benefit this weekend? are you going? i'm thinking of spending the day at griffith park if you want to come.

 **zachquinto:** i do!! so tired of the yoga studio or the gym. um don't think i'll go to the benefit thing.

 **zachquinto:** ok first real weekend trip together we should go to SF. next month their moma has a new thing you might like/i totally will. link:

 **thepeggster:** Bill and Leonard are trying to get your attention can you seriously not hear them? Did I really have to start a chat room to get your attention? WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME ROOM.

"Leonard hi!" Zach said as he got up from the captain's chair. "I'm so sorry!"

"How did you two fit in that chair?" Bill asked as he looked past Zach to Chris, who was waving and stretching out in the chair.

"Chris finally lost his baby weight, but his hips will never be the same, I think," Zach sighed.

"Gave you the best years of my life, blah blah blah," Chris said as he kept his eyes glued on his screen. "Hi Bill!" he called out as an afterthought.

"For the record," Simon said loudly. "They were talking to each other on gchat, and I had to tell them people were here."

"Boys, that's just excessive," Zoe said.

"You're just mad I beat your high score in Bejeweled," Chris replied. "Seriously, I'm totally entering a tournament once I beat Simon."

" _Once_? Oh, Pine. No. Just -- that's it, we start now."

"Business as usual," Zach sighed as he turned from all the conversations back to Bill and Leonard. "So. Hi there! How's everything?"

"Was my chair big enough for both of us to sit in?" Bill asked, still fixated on the chair over Zach's shoulder.

"No way. Did they think Chris would puff up in his old age and wanted to prepare for it?" Leonard asked. "Bill, don't look at me like that."

"What, with _pain_ and _suffering_ in my eyes? Too. Late. Puff up. I can't believe you."

"Yeah, I don't know, it works,” Zach said. “We have tiny hips. We're used to being all up in each other's space, so."

"Helps the creative process," Chris called out absently.

"Ears like a bat," Zach sighed.

"Sonar," Chris corrected. "I have sonar like a bat."

"Pain in the ass like a bat I've just sat on and smothered and, as its final act as a bat, decided to bite me and give me rabies," Zach further corrected.

"I can sympathize," Bill and Leonard said simultaneously.

"And I forgot to say -- congratulations on the book!" Zach said. "We all read it and loved it, it was so much fun and, you know, very… inspiring? I mean, that at least a few of us won't hate each other by the time we've got a few movies down."

"I hate all of you already," Karl said.

"Hate you more, boo," John replied.

"Bickering as a substitute for affection is so 2009, boys," Zoe sighed. "Try something else."

"The day we can't bicker, all our relationships will dissolve and we'll have to all go out in the desert and --"

"You kind of caught us on a weird day," Zach said sheepishly. "Like, weirder than usual. I swear we make eye contact and talk about the weather sometimes."

"What's the weather matter in a studio?" Leonard asked.

"Good. Point. We're just insane, then."

"Surprise," Chris said in a sing-song voice.

"We're almost done setting up for this shot -- extras, come on back! Someone call the extras back!"

Zach shrugged at Bill and Leonard apologetically before rushing back to the captain's chair to sit and drape his legs on Chris.

"What are you doing," Chris whined. "Also I had a perfect chain set up and you threw me off! Six, Zach! Six!"

"I'm writing my third Spock book in my head right now," Zach said. "Dear Reader: Chris and I were, at this point, living happily ever after, except when he developed an addiction to Bejeweled."

"I can quit anytime I like," Chris said as he focused on the screen, the tablet propped against Zach's knees now. "Right now, though, _anytime_ just so happens to be when I kick Simon's ass."

"And then Chris lost all his friends and everyone he had ever loved, his job and his livelihood, and his phone plan with 3G, so when he did beat Simon's score, he couldn't share it with anyone and it was _all in vain_ ," Simon intoned seriously. "Seven chain, Pine. Eat it."

"Simon can ghostwrite my book," Zach sighed. "I'm just going to lie here on you and die of grief."

"Idiot, you're in the wrong franchise and you don't have Liv Tyler's hair," Chris said. A few seconds later, he lost at his game, joined the chorus of sighs, and turned off his tablet, storing it in the side of the chair cushion with Zach's. Chris pulled Zach's legs closer as the extras filed in and took their places, pretty content to be ignored and generally not care who was watching.

"I could, too, if I grew it out," Zach said. "My hair's really straight -- if either of us can get the dark-haired elven look, it's totally me."

"Yeah, totally not Zoe or anything," Chris replied.

"The hell I'm putting on pointed ears for another franchise," Zoe said as she stood up and tried to make her dress look longer. "Though maybe _The Hobbit Part II_ is still casting -- they'd give me a skirt that covers my whole ass, wouldn't they?"

"I don't think we had any black elves, though," Karl said.

"You weren't even in the elf parts," Simon replied. "You _Man of Rohan_."

"Shut up."

Chris pushed the captain's chair side to side as the scene around them became a little more chaotic, and Zach smiled back at him. He reached a hand out to rest on the back of Chris's neck, at which point Chris laughed and realized Zach's limbs were _draped_ on him like a squid.

"You love it so much," Zach said. "You love my squidness. You'd make a shawl out of me if it weren't so gauche and against my animal-loving principles."

"If it didn't involve me killing you and draping myself in your limbs, Jesus, Zach, that's so gross."

" _You're_ gross."

"You're grosser."

"Oh my God," J.J. quietly announced because, of course, it was one of his set visit days. "Zach, half of your ear is coming off -- Chris, stop making it worse! Why are you _wearing_ each other? Zach, are you even in character? Stop emoting! You stop encouraging him! Where is my _fucking_ Diet Coke, I can't even think right now. Get all those fucking iPads off the set -- just because we look like we're in an Apple store doesn't mean we have to advertise it! Karl, why are you on the bridge? You're a doctor, not -- whatever! Are you even _in_ this scene? What is this movie? Who _are_ all of you?"


End file.
